Maid in Japan: Services Provided with a Twist

Japan Vox, Lifestyle Vox — By Chien Mi Wong on April 4, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Tokyo — The streets of Akihabara are littered with adorable, young girls dressed in frilly French maid costumes, most of whom are soliciting for business for dozens of maid cafés.

Maid cafés have become part and parcel of the Japanese culture since, according to Metropolis magazine they first appeared in 1998 at a marketing event for a dating simulation game, Welcome to Pia Carrot.

The cafés initially provided a pit stop for hardcore gamers and obsessed anime fans, known as otaku, to rest their weary feet and be doted upon by maids. Now they attract all sorts ranging from school-children to single women.
The first permanent café, Cure Maid Café, was founded in 2001 by the cosplay designer, Cospa, in Akihabara, a shopping district in Tokyo where computer and comic stores proliferate.

Cosplay is short for “costume play” and is usually considered as a Japanese phenomenon. It involves one dressing up as a fictional character, usually from sci-fi movie, video game or comic book.

Soon, Tokyo was awash in maid cafés, maid hair salons and even maid ear-cleaning. Currently, over 200 maid cafés exist in Japan alone.

Costumed staff normally greet their patrons with “Welcome home, master!” and engage them in quick-witted conversations – all of which are, unfortunately for foreign tourists, in Japanese.

Menus concentrate on desserts, which can best be described as adorable. Cuteness is, after all, what customers pay for when visiting a maid café.

At an additional cost, patrons can get extras like messages written in ketchup on their omelettes. They can also play games such as rock-paper-scissors or have personalised Polaroid photos taken with maids.

According to Metropolis, the boom for maid cafés began in 2003 when the Ministry of International Trade and Industry supported the idea of developing Akihabara as a destination for maids. The number of maid cafés ballooned from four to 40 establishments over the next few years.

This became a global phenomena when NHK TV featured @home café as a Christmas special in 2005, which aired in over 180 countries.

Established tour groups, including Akiba Map and the government-sponsored Japan Travel Bureau (JTB), now include visits to maid cafés in their tour packages.

Competition has led to the endless permutations of the form, where various kinds of service take place in differently themed cafés. A few have spawned butler cafés that cater to women, and even a mother café, which caters to those who like being treated like children.